The Tale of Tell
by YouLookLikeFOOD
Summary: Every year, twenty-four children were sent off to Hunger Games. Every year, twenty-three died. Every year, one came back, a twisted, nightmarish wreck of who they used to be. And then there was Tell.
1. Prologue

The butcher's daughter was waiting.

She was very good at that, at waiting. She had waited for many things in her life. It was her duty, what she was meant to do. As others went out to fulfill their own duties, she would stay behind, then welcome them home when they returned.

With this skill for waiting came other skills; she knew how to assess a situation before reacting to it. Knew to hold her tongue until words were truly necessary. Knew how to be patient until she had all the details. Waiting had taught her many things, it was certain.

She ambled along the edge of the electrified fence, in no particular hurry. It was not the first time in her life that she found herself waiting for footsteps that would not arrive. But today, she realized, it mattered very much to her that they _did _arrive. She sat down in the tall, overgrown grass, running her fingers through it carefully, so as to not break a single blade of greenery.

Five minutes passed, with only the gentle breeze tugging playfully at her hair to keep her company. She sat there idly, watching for an oncoming figure in the distance. She pushed down her anxieties, smothering the nagging knowledge that this man had never been late a day in his life. She would still wait. It was only five minutes. Five minutes was nothing. She dug her fingers carefully into the soil.

Ten minutes.

Ten minutes, she could ignore. She carelessly lifted a twig up from the ground, swished it about a few times, then tossed it towards the electric fence. It made contact with a flash of light, then returned to her, charred and blackened. She waited a few moments before picking it up; ash stained her fingers as she flung it away again. She could look past ten minutes, ignore the seconds that ticked away in the world, wasting her life away in a symphony of time.

Five minutes later, and fifteen minutes had gone by. Now, she began to grow nervous. It was a mild worry, a quiet apprehension that caused her to do little more than gnaw on her cheek. She wished that she could have brought her knives with her, could rearrange them carefully in her jacket, as she always did when worried. But, unfortunately, she had left them in the shop where they belonged; where _she _belonged. She could not remove the tools of her trade from the butcher's shop, no matter what comfort they brought to her.

So, in their place, she turned to comfort by running her fingers along a black ribbon that encircled her throat. The action slowed her pounding heart somewhat, and she tugged at the decoration around her neck gently. It was, perhaps, a bit too tight, but it was nothing she could not live with.

Twenty minutes. The butcher's daughter, for all of the skill at waiting, was now pacing. She could understand five and ten and fifteen minutes. But twenty was pushing it.

Little did the butcher's daughter realize the importance of this day. As she saw a figure emerging in the distance, saw it ambling towards her, she sighed in relief. A grin spread across her face and her heartbeat quickened; she did not know how this day would change her life forever.

She ran towards the silhouetted figure, arms outstretched. She almost laughed aloud, almost giggled like the child she was meant to be as she ran towards him.

But then he stumbled into the light, and her pace slowed. She staggered forwards, finally pulling herself to a halt as she caught sight of his entirety. The figure was not walking with his typical purposeful stride, but rather lurching with an unsightly gait. It was not a healthy color on his cheeks as he came into the sunlight, but a sickly, deathly white.

And, of course, there was the bloodied knife in his chest.

The butcher's daughter stared onwards, unable to speak in her horror, unable to understand the sight before her. Her head shook slightly back and forth. Her mouth closed, never to say its friendly greeting. Her hands returned to her chest, never to give the hug they had been desperate to give.

The shadowed figure of her father stumbled forwards a final time, then fell into the grass at her feet, sprawled out in an undignified manner. The butcher's daughter knelt down next to him, her hands hesitating above his lifeless form, then purposefully rolling him onto his back. She held her ear next to his lips, so that she could hear any final words he had to say, any last parting that would somehow soften the blow. But there was nothing; he was already gone.

Never speaking, never making a sound, she buried her face in his chest and allowed herself a moment to cry, to mourn, to wish that things were different. But it was only a moment, and no more. It couldn't be any more, as she knew it was only a matter of time before those who did this would follow quickly.

The butcher's daughter frantically dried her eyes and stepped away from the body, plastering a look of shock and devastation on her face. This was not difficult. As the white uniforms of Peacekeepers swarmed around her, bundling her away from the body, she kept her silence. She was unable to form the questions she knew they would be expecting from her, but they didn't seem to notice. She was, after all, just a young girl. She couldn't possibly be involved in her father's plan to overthrow the Capitol, couldn't possibly have even known about it.

She was swept off, away from her father's body, away for further questioning. Her eyes stayed locked on the corpse, and a few tears streaked down her face; but it was not for her own sake that she cried. These tears had a purpose, as everything did in her life; she had an image to maintain, and now she was maintaining it.

As his body faded from her sight, she still knew very little of how this day would affect her. But she knew it would. She knew that this day was now very, very important.

For this was the day that the butcher's daughter became the butcher's orphan.


	2. Chapter 1

"Would you care to explain this to me, Tell?"

The butcher's orphan looked up at the woman, away from the carnage in the room. A few children huddled up in a conspiratorial way, watching from a distance, unseen by most but certainly observed by Tell. She stared blankly ahead; the community home had always been her least favorite option. She kept repeating the facts to herself in her mind; soon enough, she would be eighteen, and allowed to go and run her parent's butcher shop once again. She knew she could do it, knew she was good at it; in fact, for quite a while, she'd been running it by herself. Until the Peacekeepers found out and sent her here; the worst place known to child kind. But she had only a year; only a year, and then this would all be over.

But that didn't stop her from wishing; wishing, with all of her heart, that she could do something for the other children, for the ones who had no other place to go, who had no hope for the future. She wanted to do something for the ones who'd had the light die in their blackened and bruised eyes. And she was willing to do almost anything to help; as the angry red welts that striped her arms more than proved.

"Well?" The woman- a nasty, bony person with a foul temper and the misfortune of being named 'Mrs. Elibern'- pointed a gnarled finger at the room ahead. "Do you have anything to say?"

Tell observed the wreckage that was all that remained of the said foul-tempered woman's room. Her head tilted to the side. The desk had been destroyed, splintered across the room in many pieces. The mattress where Mrs. Elibern slept was now little more then scattered puffs of stuffing and strips of cloth, which littered the room at random. There was mud streaked along the walls, along with something that looked suspiciously like dried blood. Dark, muddy footprints had been tracked across the carpet. There were even a few holes in the walls that looked like stab wounds; someone had very clearly taken a knife to them.

Yes, she had known that would be what got her into trouble; they would recognize her signature. Her personal touch; Tell couldn't keep her hands off of knives. An unfortunate, but necessary, addiction.

She turned to Mrs. Elibern again, assessing the question in her mind. _Do you have anything to say? _It was a fair query. If she was like one of the other kids, the kind who tried to stay out of trouble and denied everything if they ever failed, she would've answered with a meek negative or an apology. If she were like one of the bolder ones, the ones who liked to make their statements with sledgehammers and take all of the credit, making sure that everyone knew beyond reasonable doubt that it was them, she would have answered with the truth. At the time, she'd had quite a bit of fun destroying the room, and would probably do it again if she had the chance; a part of her was tempted to say this aloud, simply to see the look on the woman's face.

However, Tell was nothing like the other kids. And so she said nothing. Because she always said nothing.

A flash of red crossed her vision as Mrs. Elibern's small, scrawny hand struck the side of her face. Tell stumbled back, tasting blood in her mouth. She shook her head, trying to clear the spots from her eyes, her hand instinctively going to the inside of her jacket. But there was no weapon to cling to; just a small note that she crumpled in her fingers carefully, before calling her hand back out and dropping it to her side. She stared up defiantly at Mrs. Elibern, and wondered vaguely who Mr. Elibern was, and what life had done to him that he had been forced to marry this wretched woman.

"What about now?" She sneered. "Anything to say to me _now?_"

Tell considered speaking, perhaps to say that striking a defenseless child was a fine way to show her superiority over the human race, but decided it wasn't worth the waste of breath. Instead, she simply looked away. She'd had her reasons for doing this. She would never regret them.

Her eyes flickered to the watching kids, who immediately withdrew behind the doorway in a panic. She looked back to the room; Mrs. Elibern had missed her lapse in concentration. She was screaming now, demanding a response that she would not get. Tell tuned her out, noting that Tansi had not been among the group of watching children. Tansi Mason, just another child in the community home, who didn't mean anything to Tell personally. But there was the little fact that, just recently, she had turned twelve; which meant that she was now old enough to be called into the Hunger Games.

Everyone soldiered through that first year as bravely as they could, but it would forever be the worst. Once you knew that you had survived one year without having your name called, you knew that there was hope for the future. Even if your name was put in a few more times in the years to come, there was still the fact that you had not yet been called; and thus hope that you never would be. A small, faint, unreasonable hope, but hope nonetheless.

But that first year… Tell remembered it vividly, though perhaps for different reasons. She herself had never feared the Games. It would not be quite so impossible for her to win; and if she did not, then she would be dead, and her fear would have gotten her nowhere. Fear was a killer, nothing more. But she knew that most others had not come to this same realization; particularly others like Tansi, who were still too young. Too inexperienced with the reaping.

So it was for Tansi's sake that she had destroyed this room, had done this 'terrible' deed. She had seen Tansi's tears, when one day-two days prior to the reaping- it became too much, and she had been unable to carry on silently. Though the twelve-year-old had tried to sob quietly, the noise had still woken Mrs. Elibern; and stirred up her infamous foul temper. Tell had been nearby, washing the floor, when she'd heard Tansi's screams as she was struck, her blubbering apologies and eventual heart-wrenching sobs when it was over.

Tell wasn't having that.

Thus, she had done what needed to be done. It had been difficult to decide which knife she would have to part with in order to get the job done; after all, once she caused that destruction, they would know that she had a blade on her despite their best efforts. And they had tried to keep her away from knives; they no longer allowed her to use them at lunch, and she wasn't trusted to do the dishes anymore. But she still kept a small collection; a secret stash, if you will, from the days before all of those rules had been put into effect.

Even as Mrs. Elibern gripped Tell's hair roughly, dragged her to her own room, and demanded that she give up the knife she'd been hoarding, Tell regretted nothing. She rarely did anything to regret; she planned everything too carefully for that, made note of every situation too meticulously. She kept her face blank for the half-hour of screaming that followed; an easy thing for her to do. Even when she was struck again, she said nothing, did nothing to react against it, until eventually, she was shoved back into her room, the door locked.

Once there, she examined the fresh wounds in the mirror. Only one of the bruises that was to come was already beginning to show; the others were hidden. But by tomorrow-reaping day- she'd have two very lovely black eyes. The corner of her lip was also split; blood trickled down her chin, and she wiped it away carefully, not touching the cut itself. It would heal nicely enough, but tomorrow, the most important day of the year, when she was supposed to look nice and pretty for the reaping, she was going to have black eyes and a fat lip. What a lovely touch to her outfit.

She gently ran two fingers across the black ribbon on her throat and allowed a small half-smile to cross her lips. Anything to ruin the reaping was a good thing; and best of all, the blame could not be put on her. She, after all, had not caused these bruises and markings. No one would suspect her true hatred, her absolute loathing towards the Games and all they stood for. She had her own small rebellion, as a true one could not be accomplished yet. The death of her parents had proved that much.

But as the day went on, her cheerfulness began to fade. She began to pace in circles around her room, eyeing the lock ruefully on every third step, glancing to the window on every fifth. The sun had already set, the moon creeping slowly into the inky skies. The day before the reaping was not a good day to be alone in a place you hated.

Besides, she reminded herself. It was almost a tradition now.

Every year since she'd come to the home, back when she was younger, Tell had made it her solemn duty to return to the butcher's shop she'd been taken from. Every year, on the same day-today- she would sneak out of the community home and go back to her old one. It always earned her a punishment, and once they caught on to her little 'tradition' there were always methods of preemption, but Tell always managed it one way or another. No matter the lock that was placed on her door, she would find a way to pick it. No matter the tricks that Mrs. Elibern or the others who ran the home had, Tell would make note and be one step ahead. That was what she'd been trained to do, after all. She had picked the lock one year, then jumped out the window the next when they forgot to lock that as well. She had knocked out someone stationed in front of her door once; that had been a particularly fun year. Of course, the next year, they had placed a child guard at her door; they knew of her soft spot towards the other children and had no problems exploiting it.

But then, the children-or at the very least this child- had a soft spot for Tell as well. The boy in question, one Surge Wells, had grinned as she'd come out the door, pressed a finger to his lips, then lied down on the floor as though he'd been knocked out. To this day, Tell swore that she had knocked him unconscious, no matter who asked, and Surge had never gotten into trouble for it. It was only after this particular year that she realized how desperate these children were for hope; that her little 'tradition' would keep it alive for just a little bit longer, that they would cheer on her quiet and eventually useless rebellions.

This year, she knew, there were going to be two people stationed at her door, and her window had been partially boarded, so that she could see outside but not fit through the gap they had left. She could not remove the board without too much noise, and the guards this year were adults; she could not chance that her skills would get her through. But she had to do this; for the children's sake, true, but also for her own. She could not face a reaping day without first seeing her home.

It was not the Games that scared her. It was the reaping itself. Every year, the atmosphere of fear that surrounded the square would stifle and smother her. Everyone would be packed into their respective sections, their skin clammy and cold, sweat trickling down their necks, their hearts racing. And that much fear in a place was contagious; no matter how hard Tell tried to maintain her cold and careless manner, it was nigh impossible in such a place. Particularly if she had no happier memories to block it from her mind; and happier memories were hard to come by in this place.

She went to the door and picked the lock slowly, carefully, quietly. Once it was unlocked, she left it alone; she would gage the situation later. She tried to think of a clever way out of here, a nifty little solution that would go down in the children's history. In the end, she realized she had no other choice; quickly, she slashed out a few long, thin strips from her older clothes, the ones that were so threadbare that they were no longer of use to anyone. She fashioned these into makeshift ropes, then sat and waited at her bed for a little longer. She had to be patient. It was her skill, after all.

She stayed as motionless as possible for the next few hours, then went to her door and listened carefully. She wasn't looking for silence; a silent guard tended to be a vigilant one. A sleeping guard could be anything but silent, and normally the more relaxed ones would be chatting with their partner.

She heard a loud sigh on one end, then another a few minutes later. One guard accounted for; he sounded rather bored. And the other…? She pressed her ear closer to the door, straining her hearing to its limit, and was rewarded with the sound of light snoring.

She almost smiled. No matter how Mrs. Elibern may have stressed to her underlings that Tell was _not _to leave today, it was ridiculous to assume that they would take it to heart. It didn't matter so much to them, and really, it was the reaping day tomorrow. They wanted to get as much sleep as possible before that happened, as they were the ones in charge of making sure the children were all ready and all wearing their finest. Besides, it was only inevitable that the butcher's orphan escape; so why bothering trying to stop it?

Tell removed one of her knives from her stash. This was bad; she was losing two of them in one day. But, if she was returning to the butcher's shop, she may be able to sneak one back. The corner of her lip twitched downwards. Then again, she did not want to risk losing one of _those _knives to these people; and they would have every right to take it if she brought it here.

At any rate, she saw no other solution. Not at first. But then she caught sight of something and lifted an eyebrow. That might work. She could pull it off; she was a good liar, as she rarely said anything that was not a lie. She rarely said anything at all.

She quickly retrieved one of her knives, went to the board at her window and, with careful, meticulous strokes, started to saw through it. It would take too much time to saw through the whole board, and there would be a larger chance that she would be caught, but she was not going for the whole board; she slid the knife along the corner, sawing carefully, until she had a decent shaft of wood. Again, she almost smiled. Again, she stopped herself.

With a faster pace now-time was running slightly thin; she did want to spend at least an hour or so at her parents' house before dawn- she sharpened the end of the wood to a point. Perhaps they would know that she'd used a blade for this task, but they could not prove that she hadn't created it with the blade they'd taken from her earlier in the day. And likely they would believe that she wouldn't resort to this if she wasn't truly weaponless.

Tell hid the knife, then crept out of the room; the door, thankfully, did not squeak, and she ended up directly behind her two guards. One, as she'd thought, was sitting down, snoring gently. The other was standing, but his eyelids were drooping, and he was propped awkwardly against the doorframe. This was going to be almost easy.

She stepped up behind the man carefully, her bare feet making no sound, and placed the wooden point against his spine. She saw him stiffen, standing at attention, but she said nothing. And, given the way he started babbling, she had no need to say anything.

"All right, Tell," the man said quickly, in a hopefully-reassuring tone. "Let's not do anything we'll regret, here."

Tell fought rolling her eyes and gripped one of his hands; she yanked it back roughly, followed by the other hand-which he gave to her- and tied his wrists together with the old strips of cloth, shifting the wooden weapon so that it was out of her way, but also no longer pressed against him. Thankfully, he was smart enough to keep quiet; even as she gagged him and tied his ankles. She quickly gagged the sleeper, pressing the point against his throat, covering a majority of it with her hand so that it wouldn't be seen, then similarly tied him up as well.

She then slid the wooden object into her belt, closed her door, and slipped down the hallway. Bluffing your way in and out of a situation was easier when you let the other person make all of the assumptions for themselves. She finally allowed herself a smile and crept silently out of the community home. She would pay dearly for that stunt later, as threatening people like that was not only disallowed, but illegal. Tonight, however, Tell did not care; the worst that would happen would be a whipping, and that was only pain, after all. She was running from something far worse than pain; she was running from fear, seeking solace in the place she loved.

She was at the house in twenty minutes. Despite the grimy look of the place, the unkempt, abandoned air that surrounded it, Tell could see nothing but _home. _She walked up the pathway, overgrown with weeds from the wild, tangled lawn, and directly to the doorway. It was locked, but Tell had been the one to put the lock on in the first place; she removed the key from her pocket and clicked the house open. The old door creaked as it swung open, and Tell thought she caught sight of something running across the floors, but she didn't truly care. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, listening to the shadows, to the quiet settling of the house around her.

_Home._

Her eyes flew open. She ran on silent feet to the room where she lived, one of two in the house that connected directly to the butcher's shop. She ran to her bed and pushed it aside, pulling up a loose floorboard, waving dust away from her face. It was still there; there was no where else it could be, really. No one else would find this as valuable as she did. She quickly lifted the jacket out of its hidden compartment and slid her arms through it. There was the gentlest of sounds, audible only to her ears, as the knives inside clinked against each other softly. She let out a sigh of relief; it felt good to have these on her person again, to feel safe again. Despite the cold stiffness of the previously unworn jacket, to her it felt warm and comforting; like the last hug her father had never been able to give her.

She quickly slid one of the smaller blades from her jacket, testing its weight by twirling it once in her hand, then threw it at the wall. She smiled; it stuck, of course, and she was only slightly off of her mark. It was to be expected that her skills were a little rusty; she hadn't worked with them in quite a while. But whenever she could, she made sure to keep up with her abilities with knives; after all, she was going back to the butcher's shop eventually. She would need all of that skill one day. She began to take the other knives out, one by one, throwing them at various targets around the house, then collecting them, replacing them in her jacket, and throwing them again. Within the hour, her old reflexes began to kick in once again, her body falling into its familiar rhythm, and her aim improved drastically.

During the second hour of her stay at her house, she simply wandered about aimlessly. She went into the butcher's shop-now devoid of customers and meat- and ambled about in silence, making not a sound, silent as night. She roamed the hallways of house and shop alike, haunting the place with her parent's ghosts.

It wasn't long after the second hour that Mrs. Elibern came for her; with the help of a few Peacekeepers and some other community home cronies, she surrounded the place, ready to ambush it. Tell watched, unseen, in the window, and raised an eyebrow. She surveyed everything; seeing no way out, she stashed the jacket away, then sauntered outside, head held high. This, of course, made Mrs. Elibern furious, but that was Tell's intent. She was returned to the community home with a lecture from the Peacekeepers and far worse from Mrs. Elibern.

But Tell would not regret this action. Because she had done what had needed to be done. And, though she did not realize it yet, she would need this visit to her old home more than she could have known. She would need the memories of this time to get her through the days that would follow, the days that would come for her like vultures.

Because Tell was going to do what needed to be done at least once more in the next few hours.


End file.
